– Shorts and Squares: Jagged Blade was supposed to be out on the 14th, but I went back to fiddling with it and screwed it up. There’s a reason I don’t give hard self-pub release days. I’m terrible at being able to let it go.
The Jagged Blade mix so far:
- Heroes & Villains: Black Friday [square]
- I Saw An Execution Once [short]
- Forgot the Can Opener [short]
- Clyde [short]
- Inquisitor Jang: The Wilding [square]
- Bird of Paradise [square]
- Slipping Through the Cracks: Normal Again [square]
- Patient of Interest [short]
- A Cuckoo In the Nest [square]
- Altredes: One [serial novel]
I’ve taken out a couple of stories, added one, and yet I still feel as if there’s something missing. Some key element that will tie things together.
I’d rather hold off a few days or weeks and make something I love versus rushing. (I’ve already got a few that I’m reworking. I don’t want this to be another one.)
– I have been building up my universe. I’ve been writing notes on all the different events taking place to make the Worlds develop as they do. I’ve written brief outlines for a bunch of stories already.
Of Blood => The aliens attacking are the Hex. They are led by a rebel MaretHex (Lord) that fled exile to take over a primitive world. He has his thousands of followers and their ships. They conquer Earth.
The human resistance keeps fighting against the occupiers even while society moves on. Vampires and Others decide that to save their world they’ll have to reveal themselves to the humans. They join the war to reclaim Earth.
The battle commences and it is bloody and violent.
I’m waiting for it, whenever it comes out. There’s not much I’ve read by you that I didn’t really like, so you’re pretty much assured a place on my to-buy list.
One thing, though. I’m not really sure what you mean when you call some of the stories ‘squares’?
I don’t smoke myself, but when I was traveling around the country I was with a group of people that were constantly exchanging cigarettes, buying cigarettes, begging for cigarettes, etc. And a short is a partially smoked cigarette, while a square is a single unsmoked cigarette. “You gonna smoke the rest of that short?” “Can I get a square?”
I wrote the outline for an mm romance story called “Shorts and Squares” where one character is the older guy on the scene and the younger guy is the fresh-faced new kid. The older guy is the short, who has made all these mistakes and is still doing the same things he did when he was 20, while the younger guy is the square.
Anyway, I stole my title for reuse, and I’ve decided to make it a whole series. It’s part of the reason why I’ve held off publishing Jagged Blade, so I could figure out how it ties in with Relativistic and The Strangers. I’ve had to move some of the stories around to keep to my chosen themes. (Like Jagged Blade is mostly stories about the mother’s of the different Variants.)
Short = vignette, Square = story.
Oh, that makes more sense now. Are all of the Variant’s mothers duplicates of Sandra as well?
They’re variations as well. Like how none of the Variants look exactly like Vereint, all of their mothers look different and have different names, yet they share some of the same personality quirks.
I’m going with the principle that timelines can be nonlinear and reincarnation is possible, which allows me to have several Variants appear at different points in a universe’s history. That way Melissa can pop in different times to affect a society’s development.
The correct amalgamation of genetic material, and two people that might have been Sandra and Patrick have a son that’s a Variant. I’ve given myself the rule that only one Variant can be born in a universe at a time, but an alternate *can* enter from another universe (Faizel and Charlemagne).
I got a bunch of pictures of the model on the front of Jagged Blade and I’m going to insert them into the print version. I was going to do it for the ebook, but I guess a lot of people hate pictures :/
For myself, I don’t hate pictures, but I seldom see the point of having them in a novel. When I read a book with pictures, I’ll look at them, but my main focus is the story. That said, there’s nothing wrong with having them, so whatever you feel is best for the book should work out just fine.